Patricia McKillip - The Tower at Stony Wood

But the walls and towers of Gloinmere were as yet intact. No dragon shadow flowed across the rising moon. It would be easier to face the dragon and Thayne Ysse together, Cyan felt, than the king’s bewildering and dangerous wife. He still wore the battered disk over his heart, a reminder of his unfinished quest. He would show it to the king, who by now might have glimpsed something in his smiling wife that had begun to disturb his dreams, something amiss in her shadow, something chilling that happened to her eyes when she danced.

So Cyan hoped, or he would be forced to lay the stark bones of the tale out before the king and try to convince him that they truly shaped some marvelous and deadly beast that in Yves existed only on a tapestry.

He rode through the gate into the yard, barely noticing the startled expressions he caused as the guards opened the gates and the stabler ran to take the gelding. He walked wearily up the steps into the hall, where the king sat at supper with his court. Tables lining the long carpet to the dais grew oddly quiet as he passed, in his dusty, patched surcoat, his hair loose and untidy down his shoulders, the warped, tarnished disk hanging on his breast. He kept his eyes on Regis, wondering how to begin. The king, staring at him, seemed as mute. He gestured sharply at the musicians for silence and rose. As he passed behind the gold-haired man sitting beside him, Cyan’s steps faltered; he felt, for a moment, as if he were trying to walk through tide.

The queen drew his eyes, then, the woman who had forced him out of Gloinmere, haunted his journey across Skye, and met him at his journey’s end. She watched him thoughtfully, lifting one hand that flashed gold in the candlelight from every finger as she touched the arm of the woman beside her.

Cyan stopped. Regis reached him then; Cyan started to kneel, but the king embraced him, pounding dust out of his tunic as Cyan stared in disbelief over his shoulder. The baker from Stony Wood, his eyes were trying to tell him, was sitting next to the queen.

“How—” he began blankly, but the king was already talking.

“I know,” he said. “I know. Gwynne told me where you had gone and why—”

“What?”

“That she had asked you to go very quickly and quietly to Skye, to rescue a kinswoman of hers trapped in a tower. She told me that of all my knights you were the only one who could see his way clearly in Skye.”

“I didn’t—I couldn’t—is that Thayne Ysse? Eating supper in your hall?”

Regis nodded, his mouth tightening briefly, as he contemplated the sight. “I had to yield the North Islands to him when he came with his dragon. That woman from Stony Wood threatened to raise all the magic in Skye against me if I didn’t.”

“Sel did?”

“Thayne Ysse said you faced that dragon in Skye. I’ve never seen such a monster in my life.”

“It spoke to me,” Cyan said dazedly, “instead of killing me.”

“It didn’t speak to me. It didn’t have to.”

“Where is it?”

“Thayne said it must have gone back to Skye.” He paused, eyeing the disk. He lifted it, looked more closely at the face in the cloudy silver while Cyan held his breath. “That’s Gwynne.”

“It’s the woman I was sent to find.”

The king dropped the disk. “She looks just like Gwynne.” He gripped Cyan’s shoulder tightly, studying him. “You look like you’ve been on a battlefield. Who slashed your towers?”

“The dragon.”

The king’s face changed, as if he had caught a sudden glimpse of the strange and dangerous path Cyan had followed out of Gloinmere. “Get the dust out of your hair,” Regis said tersely. “Then sit with us. I want to hear what happened to you in Skye.”

Cyan bowed his head, grateful for a few moments away from the queen’s eyes, to gather his straying wits and piece them back together. She gave him just time enough to wash and change. He stood weighing the disk in his hand, wondering how much to tell Regis then, and how much in private later, when she entered.

She walked through the door without opening it. The face she revealed stunned him, with its flat, dark, lidless eyes, the bones pushing out beneath them, widening her lipless mouth, her white skin livid and shining, like something born in shadow and water that evaded light. His fingers locked protectively over the disk. Beyond that he could not move. He could only watch her helplessly, as he had when her silver ring had flashed in his eyes beyond the tower walls, and he had let her live.

This time, her ringed hand moved toward the disk. He shook his head a little, wordlessly, his hand tightening. He felt as though she reached through him for his heart. But not even habit could move him to raise his sword between them. His heart had glimpsed some mystery that his mind, warring against terror and rage and bewilderment, could not yet grasp. Her fingers freed the disk from his grip. He felt the touch of the sixth, the touch of magic, and closed his eyes.

She said, “You won’t need this now.”

The chain links parted suddenly. He realized only then, as it slid into her hands, how heavy it had been.

He looked at her again, and pleaded without hope, “Where is Gwynne of Skye?”

“In the hall, eating supper beside the king.”

He had to grope for air before he could speak again. “Then who—Then what—Who are you?”

The disk had vanished. She answered as the dragon had, her terrible, inhuman eyes holding his. “You could have killed me, Cyan Dag. You let me live. You tell me who I am.”

He began to tremble then, on the verge of an answer as he looked back at the long journey he had taken and saw everything change. Suddenly there was not one thing that he had done or not done that he could explain with any certainty. He knew nothing then, it seemed, except her. He bowed his head, gazed at the silver ring she wore, that they all wore: the bard, the witch, and the woman before him.

He touched her hand tentatively at first, and then less fearfully, drawing all six fingers into his hold and lifting her hand until the silver spark of magic that his heart had recognized caught light again between them.

He said, “You are the third sister.”

She smiled. It was an unlovely sight by human standards, but he felt all his fear of her drop away like another chain, ponderous and invisible, that he had worn since he left Gloinmere.

He whispered, “Why?”

“We needed you.” She raised her other hand to hold his in both of hers, as if she were coaxing him to follow her across air. “We needed you to help Sel, and Thayne Ysse and the North Islands. We wanted all your courage and your gentleness, your determination, your loyalty and your gift for seeing and for doing, as when you heard the young boy crying in the rain, what must be done.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Regis Aurum married Gwynne of Skye, that day in Gloinmere. I came with my sisters to the wedding, since the Lady from Skye is something of a cousin of ours. I wore her face here with her permission, twice: when I danced with you, and again when I frightened you and sent you on your way to Skye. And I wore her face in Skye. I was the woman in the mirror whose story Sel told to herself. I was the woman in the silver disk. I was the woman in the tower.”

He was still trembling, still trying to see where it was he had gone, what he had done while he thought he was doing something else entirely. “You sent me to rescue you—”

“You rode out of Gloinmere to rescue the woman in the tower. What you truly did, while you searched for me, was to rescue Thayne Ysse and the North Islands from seven years of bitterness and hardship. You rescued Sel from her dark tower. I told her the tale she was living, and you helped her end it. Because of you, Thayne Ysse opened the door in himself for magic to return to the North Islands. Because of you, Sel remembered her great powers and brought her magic into Yves, so that there is peace now between Thayne Ysse and Regis Aurum. Because of you.”